Jessica Lal murdered, none found guilty.

The whole country–at least the cities–has risen in uproar ever since the honourable Manu Sharma was freed in the Jessica Lall case. There’s absolutely no cause for such uproar, people should grow up and accept reality.

Reality is after all not Viruddh; even if he wanted, Jessica Lall’s father will prove unfit for the task because he is afflicted with amnesia.

In the cruellest moments of life, amnesia can be a relief. For years, Ajit Kumar Lall, 76, frequented the local courts closely following the case of his daughter Jessica Lall’s murder. But when the verdict acquitting Manu Sharma and others came today, he was unaware of it. Memories had frozen after a stroke in November 2002. “Dad doesn’t know what has been happening. It will not make any difference to him if we tell him about the case. He will forget in a few seconds. He has only sketchy memories of the past. He knows that he had a daughter but does not remember more than that. He has gone through a lot… I don’t want to disturb him further,” says Sabrina Lall…

NDTV (Hindi) carried a special on the issue last night. In the Hoary Tradition of making money out of people’s miseryjolting the nation awake with stark exposes of Nothing But The Truth, it invited people’s reactions on the verdict. Most were outraged: we’ve lost respect for the law, there’s no law, the law is the slave of politicians and powerful people, the law punishes only the poor and the middle class people, if you’re powerful you can get away with anything…

The NDTV spinmeister anchor subsequently showed us archives of similar cases, where powerful people had gotten away with all kinds of heinous crimes. It showed us 3-5 second clippings of interviews it had taken of the victims of such crimes. Remember that well: 3-5 second clippingsof horrifying victim testimony in quick session until it dropped the focus for a sufficiently long period over its most courageous reportage yet: the Gujarat riots and Best Bakery. Curiously, it held on to Zaheera Shaikh who was once the media’s star and is now relegated to oblivion for obvious reasons. Invoking previous testimony of Zaheera–and notice this testimony as shown in the archived footage was given to the media not the courts–after she subsequently retracted it hardly qualifies as honest reporting. But honesty is alien to NDTV for it is more at home with convenience.

From showing footage of individuals harming other individuals to pronouncing its own verdict on the Gujarat case, NDTV resorted to familiar tactics. As I watched, I couldn’t help but to wait and see if they showed footage of the victims of the unfortunate Kar Sevaks who were roasted alive in the train.